Today’s big news: Thomas Harris has turned out another Hannibal book, just in time for the holidays. I’ll keep my thoughts on Mr. Harris’s books to myself. There is something more troubling at work here.

The new book is called Hannibal Rising — this after the imaginatively titled Hannibal.

Was ever there an author more lazier with his titles? Where other authors might give you titles like Special Topics in Calamity Physics or I Feel Bad About My Neck, words that make us curious about the inner contents, Mr. Harris has decided upon Hannibal and Hannibal Rising.

Well, I don’t believe it’s too late. And, as a public service to Delacorte Press, I offer the following titular alternatives:

• Bride of Hannibal
• Revenge of Hannibal
• Hannibal Strikes Again
• Son of Hannibal
• It Came From Hannibal
• The Amazing Adventures of Hannibal & Hannibal
• Hannibal X
• Just When You Thought It Was Safe: Hannibal
• The Hannibal That Wouldn’t Die
• Hannibal: Season of the Witch
• Fishing with Hannibal
• The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Hannibal
• Hannibal, Hannibal
• The Night of the Living Hannibal
• Putting the Nib in Hannibal
• Hannibal: Dream Warriors
• Hannibal II: Electric Boogaloo
• I Ate Out With Hannibal and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt
• Hannibal, How About You?
• My Dinner With Hannibal
• Hannibal’s Marauders
• Hannibal Disco Derby
• Hannibal Will Be 25 in the Year 2000
• Hannibal: Not the Cannibal You Were Expecting
• Hannibal, American Style
• The Good, The Bad & The Hannibal
• I Once Knew a Cannibal Called Hannibal
• Once, Twice, Three Times a Hannibal
• Hannibal Cordon Bleu
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Hannibal
• Hannibal, Too
• I Have No Hannibal and I Must Eat
• Hannibal: The Early Years
• Hannibal on Handball
• Hannibal If You Love Jesus
• Hannibal Takes Manhattan

Corey Vilhauer has compiled a list of various bloggers’ favorite writers. At least one notable idiot, whose choices have long since changed, makes an appearance.

Diebold machines: about as easy to hack as a canceled restaurant reservation. (via William Gibson)

Who does this tosser Charlie Brooker think he is? Navelgazing over some pop idol that smart people have the good sense to ignore. I’ve only just read this wanker’s column and, according to the hed, this guy’s “supposing.”

That’s what he says, bold as brass. “Supposing,” As if loathing Justin Timberlake was some noble call to journalistic duty. All the problems of the world and this bitchy little punkass has the temerity to lock his crosshairs into something as substantial as the decaying graymatter inside his own microcephalic skull. I wouldn’t even bang his mom. And he actually got paid for this drivel? Good Christ. The Guardian ought to be ashamed. Why doesn’t he just get a blog?

I mean Jesus Christ, Brooker: “supposing” is a word you reserve for contemplating Schroedinger’s cat or Fermat’s Theorem. Has your feeble little monkey ass even heard of these things? Have you even read a book in the past six months? In a equitable world, your ass would be on the dole with all the other sad hacks who thought that they could make a difference polluting column inches with speculations on Suri’s legitimacy. But no, this Brooker guy thought he could get away with a snarky column filled with all manner of feeble vitriol. It reads as if it was written by a retarded teenager who was just kicked three times in the crotch by an octogenarian suffering from Alzheimer’s.

He can’t even take the piss out of Timberlake properly, quibbling over how Justin says “motherfuckers” on his recording. Good Christ. What sensitive ears this Brooker kid has! What overbearing prattle wasted away on fluff! If I meet Charlie in a pub, I’d throw him to the dogs. I’d get him soused on crappy Budweiser and demand that he recite the first stanza of Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Lord knows if the wanker could get past “The curfew tolls.”

And wait, it gets worse. HE USES CAPITAL LETTERS AS IF HE IS SHOUTING! Right. Something for the illiterate MySpace crowd. Points with the kids. Because that’s what this is all about. A newspaper trying to hook its talons into a readership it scarcely understands. That Brooker is the posterboy for this flummery only serves to demonstrate that newsrooms are better staffed with marsupials randomly punching in keys.

I want Charlie Brooker’s skull on my dining room table. I want to have Charlie Brooker’s arm for dinner. I want to chop off his cock and compare it against Rasputin’s in that Russian Sex Museum. I’m sure it’s much shorter. I want to claim all sorts of crazy things because it might sell papers or boost my Technorati rating.

Charlie Brooker. Charlie Looking for a Hooker (Because He Can’t Land a Date), more like.